Portland through the eyes of a festival-loving, dessert-feasting, travel-addicted Midwesterner.

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Glutton in Gluten-Free Land

Oh, food, how I love you. In my first-ever blog post, about our brand new, West Coast home city, I have to write about my budding love affair with Portland’s food. It’s that freaking good.

The food scene here – from what I can gather in a meager one week’s time – is radically different from other places I’ve experienced. Here’s a quick overview of the main themes I’ve found:

You’d be hard-pressed to find a chain restaurant in the city. I’m happy Chipotle and a few other stellar ones have scratched their way in, but otherwise, it’s all local places.

Food carts! My affinity for carnival food never prepared me for this, the food cart mecca of the U.S. There are tons. Blocks full of them. Grilled cheeses to Czech food (?) to pomme frites.

So many menus have the origins of the ingredients meticulously spelled out. Tillamook vanilla ice cream. Nueske’s bacon. Grass-fed beef from a family farm in Washington. There’s a focus on quality, local ingredients – and I dig it.

Finally, it’s like a gluten-free bonanza. Gluten-free menus, gluten-free this, gluten-free that. I need to Google the benefits of gluten-free food, since Jeff and I have been stumped by the overabundance of it here. There’s gotta be something to it.

I’m almost embarrassed to admit this, but in the 11ish days we’ve been here, we’ve probably eaten out 10 times. It’s been fabulous! Anyway, I’ll quit my blathering for now, but let’s just say this isn’t the last you’ll hear about food here.